I watched Skyline a few nights ago. In most respect it’s not a very good movie. It wanders without seeming to make a coherent point or go in any definite direction. Yet it’s got an amazingly good metaphor at its core. Somewhere in the middle of it, I remember thinking that I wish film-makers would stop it with weak, cheerleader-type female characters. By “cheerleader” I mean that’s what they do: they stand on the sidelines and cheer on the man, who is doing all the hard, dangerous stuff. If the woman actually gets involved … Continue Reading

Below is a repost, salvaged from the olden days, of my thoughts on the film Agora, which I most heartily acclaim.

My reaction to Agora was highly charged, and I wanted to let myself cool down long enough to write something sane, something that wasn’t a searing screed against book-burning fundamentalists. I finally got there, and lucky too, because what I ended up discovering in this film was enlightening for me.